


And Warred With Yourself

by clashofqueens



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: ASOS Spoilers, Canon Compliant, Character Death, Extensive Headcanon, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-19
Updated: 2013-04-19
Packaged: 2017-12-08 22:05:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/766546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clashofqueens/pseuds/clashofqueens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Dacey Mormont Character Study</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Krackens

Once someone tells her, that when she’d been a child at her mother’s breast there was talk of marrying her off to a Greyjoy son.

  
_How silly_ , she thinks,  _a bear wedded to a kraken. Don’t they know that bears eat fish?_  
   
A summer filled with Ironborn raids puts an end to marriage talk, and soon enough another babe in Mother’s belly is all that occupies the minds of the Mormont household.

And thus ends the first suitor’s quest for the hand of Dacey Mormont.


	2. Karstarks

She is a girl of eight when the next one comes:

House Karstark, with their white sun on black and their big men who stare at Dacey, mud speckled and fierce like her fore-mothers in her leathers.  
   
The middle son will be hers. A middle son for the eldest daughter of a poor but noble family.  
   
It is cousin Jorah who comes to her with the news, mussing the hair that took hours to rid of tangles and brambles.  
   
 _It is your duty, child. Duty is not supposed to be joyous._  
   
It’s the first time she’s been given a duty, and even a child of eight, a child of northern snows and sun knows that duty cannot be refused.   
   
She’s been told of duty since before her first memory, that duty - honor is what defines a life. Duty is what sent Uncle Jeor away, duty is why her cousin’s wife so eagerly seeks a child even as it hurts her.   
   
Duty makes them strong, duty is the North. It lives in her blood and bones.

 

So she stands before the hearttree, a scowl on her face scrubbed red with clean, and promises to marry this boy who stares at her like she’s a wild thing, to be tamed and bent to his will as wife.  
   
The engagement lasts barely a year, before Lord Karstark finds a better wife for his middle son than an almost-wilding of Bear Hall.  
   
That night, a tiny figure slips out to the heart tree, leaving a tiny token of thanks and swearing upon her life to marry a man of her choosing and live free.  
   
And a small fire begins to build in Dacey Mormont’s heart.


	3. Freys

Years pass, and whispers of a new marriage begin to sound through the corridors and chambers of Bear Hall.  
   
Lord Frey, of the Towers, has many sons of marriageable age, and deep pockets as well. Deep pockets that could help the empty ones of Bear Hall, newly lordless and shamed by her cousin’s wife.  
   
The smallfolk whisper, and Dacey hacks apart yet another practice dummy in her rage.  
   
She knows who stands in the door way of the armory from their silence, the odd peace that rolls out from him in waves.  
  
 _Go away._  
  
 _I heard of Lord Frey’s offer._  
  
Dropping her wrecked blade, Dacey stares at Bartie, his shadowed face revealing so little to her.  
  
 _And?_  
  
 _It is your duty to help your family._  
  
A flash of something in his eyes, something indescribable and noticed before, when her friend’s eyes linger on her a bit too long as Dacey makes her way about her home or sits at the high table at her mother’s right hand. He’s holding back, crushing his feelings under the duty that binds them all to the earth beneath them, and she thinks of the promise made by a girl to a tree, to live free or die.  
  
 _But… you also have a duty to yourself… you have a choice._  
  
She has four sisters, two of marriageable age. Lord Frey offers a third son of a fourth wife, hardly fitting for the first born and heir of another lordly house. But to force on her sisters what Dacey herself would refuse.  
  
Could she forsake one duty for hatred of another?  
  
 _I am a woman, Galbart Glover, I have no choices in this life but to die on a sword or in a gilded cage._


	4. Snowfall

She needs to make no choice, once word of the former lord’s exile spread southward, Frey retracts his offer with a sneer visible in the tilt and swirl of ink on paper.  
   
Snow is fresh on the ground, and ravens are carrying worrying news of the death of one Hand and then the fall of another when Dacey Mormont first kisses Galbart Glover.  
   
Beer and meat and melted snow are what she tastes upon his lips, and Dacey feels that burning ember she’s carried with her since that night with the heart tree burst into flame. The camp is alive behind them, hidden through branches. They march south, towards death and lions and all she knows is that she won’t meet her gods not knowing what this feels like.  
   
For a moment, his hands tighten on her waist, and their lips and tongues clash together as their wits are normally want to do. But duty slips between them again, forcing Bartie back like a physical thing.  
   
 _I- I cannot, my lady._  
   
They shouldn’t, for they both have duties now that should keep them from this. He is the Master of Deepwood Motte, she the future Lady of Bear Hall. And yet she can’t help but think of that promise, choose her own husband or die a maid, and Dacey has no intentions of dying a maid now.  
  
 _You told me once that I had a choice, and here I stand. Make yours, Master Glover._  
  
This time, Bartie pulls her closer, and Dacey feels like she’s taken the first breath after a long dive, her soul filling with air and life and light. The world is crashing down about them, and the dark of winter is approaching, but all she knows is softly passionate kisses in the silence of a first snow.


	5. Lions

They all stare at this woman amongst them, riding into battle in mail with the black bear of her house across her breast. Fearless and strong and she is everything they’ve been told women are not. Without mercy she smashes through rank on rank, fighting for North and King and a wooden woman carved onto a gate.   
   
Drunk on victory and bloodshed, Dacey doesn’t even blink as the Karstark boy she once pledged to marry is cut down by the Lion of Lannister.   
   
 _I am a she-bear_ , Dacey reminds herself,  _I have no fear of knights or lions._  
   
She will win or she will die, there is no middle ground between her king and foe.  
   
So Dacey of House Mormont squares her shoulders and stares down the Kingslayer.


	6. Lovers

Whispers say that she seeks the young king’s bed and a place at his side, but Dacey Mormont is no queen and bears do not lie with wolf pups.  
   
She loves Robb Stark as a king, not as a man, for what would she want with this boy king when a man awaits her in his tent?  
   
Duty forces Galbart to refuse her advances at first, but battle and blood has awakened the beast in both of them.   
   
He takes her roughly, blood and sweat and dirt streaking across bare skin. In the aftermath of it all, she feels his tears across her skin and she kisses them away, trying to take his sorrow inside of her and ease his burdens.  
  
For a few hours, they lose themselves in each other, drowning out the screams of the dying with moans and forgetting what it’s like to take a life with the act that makes one.  
  
In the dark and quiet of the sleeping army, warm fingers trace across her cold skin, and Dacey feels his questions buzzing in his looks and touches.  
  
 _You were not a maiden…_  
  
There a wistfulness there, but his tone lacks the bite of accusation.  
  
 _Neither were you._  
  
At that, a laugh brushes out of Bartie, and his smile feels like summer sun against her skin.  
  
The cold winds are rising, winter comes, but Dacey has found warmth in the caress of her love.  
  
This is the unseen third choice, not a death in a gilded cage or from a blade, but a life with one who loves her.


	7. Endings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains major spoilers for the Red Wedding and ASOS. Also character death.

This time when the world crashes around her, Dacey lacks the armour of her love’s arms around her. And the uncomfortable weight of mail on her shoulders replaced with the slick brush of satin to honor the man who seeks her king’s head.  
   
Outside an army awaits, loyal and strong and she reaches for the nearest thing to fight. To resist the coming darkness and death surrounding her.  
  
All she finds is a pot, ceramic leeching her body’s warmth as she smashes it against a hundredth Frey’s head.  
  
Is he the man she was once offered, one who would stoop so low as to murder those who’d eaten of his House’s bread and salt?  
  
 _None of you were ever worthy of my blood. None of you are even worthy of my blade._  
  
Laughing wildly, Dacey runs as if the Others, dead eyes and fingers of decaying flesh, nightmares made real, are behind her.  
  
The doors are half a hall away, then a quarter, then only strides from her. She’s only a few turns and horn’s blow from salvation and for once the heavy skirts around her legs are stronger protection than plate and mail.  
  
Who would notice a woman in skirts running from battle?  
  
She reaches for them, and the doors spring open with the flash of steel in candlelight behind them. And for a wild moment, Dacey thinks their salvation is here, that storming through the door is her King’s army.  
  
The man that greets her with axe in hand wears not the wolf of Stark, but the Towers of Frey, and she barely notices the swing of the axe before it’s buried in her, lifting satin covered feet from the floor.  
  
It takes two jerks for the fat oaf to pull the axe from her, and Dacey laughs as blood fills her mouth. Even in her last moments, her body fights for her King, refusing to surrender easily the weapon that has ended her.  
  
Iron coats her mouth, and an entire existence flashes through her mind, a life with her love in the land she misses with everything in her. Children and laughter and an eternal summer in the dead of winter. Coughing heavily, she’s only dimly aware of what is around her, and only a single tear leaks out of her eyes as a sword is thrust through the Young Wolf’s heart and his mother screams.   
  
All is lost for her here, and Dacey Mormont closes her eyes, and dreams of a life that will never come to pass.


End file.
